Trouble Brewing In McLaren Paradise

The 2008 world champion fought back from the disappointment in Australia to lead a Mercedes 1-2 finish at Sepang

The new rules were one of the main reasons that Lewis Hamilton left McLaren and joined Mercedes in 2013. His new team has started this F1 season with a huge advantage over other teams given their superior engine, both in terms of mileage and horse power.

However, when a team has such a distinct advantage at the start of the season, the teammates end up having a title fight among themselves. There is no doubt that towards the end of this 2014 season, both Nico Rosberg and Hamilton will be in contention for the title. Rosberg jumped to an early lead with his victory in Australia, but his team-mate has now pulled some points back thanks to his start-to-finish run in Malaysia. Make no mistake: their friendship will soon spill over to championship rivalry.

Competitive Red Bull In terms of beating team-mates, Sebastian Vettel pulled one back from his newbie partner Daniel Ricciardo as well. The Australian’s miserable start to the season continued as he failed to finish at Sepang, after being disqualified in Melbourne. And for the next race in Bahrain he already has a grid penalty awaiting him, after one of his pit mechanics wasn’t wearing a helmet during the race. Even so, the Bulls are back on the pace. They struggled on the street circuit at Albert Park, but in the second race of the season – hosted on a proper F1 circuit – they bounced back to form. In the wet, Vettel was within touching distance of the two Mercedes cars in qualifying, splitting the two in final grid standings. During the dry race, he didn’t have the pace to catch them. But anyone who watched that session can conclude that the Red Bulls have great aerodynamic advantage that helped them beat McLaren, Williams and Ferrari. And this aspect will only get better as the season progresses, thanks to the genius that is Adrian Newey.

Team orders comedy Williams had a lot of troubles at Sepang, most of all after both their cars missed Q3 in qualifying. Then during the race, Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa clashed as early as lap eight when the latter was chasing Kevin Magnussen’s McLaren. The team allowed them to race at that instant. But later on, Jenson Button’s McLaren stood in Massa’s way as Bottas again caught up. The team asked Massa to let his teammate through, a nightmare situation for the Brazilian who experienced the same at Ferrari, yet this time he stood his ground. Expect this to explode soon enough!

Night Race at Bahrain To celebrate its tenth anniversary, the Bahrain Grand Prix will be held under lights. The preparations are already complete at the Sakhir circuit and considering the other two races under lights – Singapore and Abu Dhabi – this will be another spectacle on the F1 calendar. Back to business though, many questions still remain: will Red Bull keep up their momentum? Will Williams and McLaren get back into the mix? What about Ferrari? Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen weren’t too pleased with their car’s pace in Malaysia, and with a week’s time in between, a turn-around in fortunes might not be possible.

Mercedes will be quick as usual. It will be surprising if either Rosberg or Hamilton don’t win this first night race in Bahrain. But after their two cars, it is anybody’s guess.